Widowers of women who have died after contributing for years to pension schemes are beginning to pay for past discrimination in a battle of the sexes where no one wins.

Gillian Hanson died in 1996, shortly after retiring from a long and distinguished career as a doctor and consultant in the NHS. She had contributed to the NHS pension scheme for 36 years, paying the same contributions as male colleagues. Yet her husband Roger Farrand is receiving a pension of less than £10,000, 40% below what a widow in his position would receive. Farrand, a retired publisher, said: "If I were a woman I would get £23,000."

In 1988, the rules of the NHS pension scheme were changed to provide widowers' pensions, but only contributions from that time on counted. Those who want to backdate benefits have had to buy this right.

Roger Farrand says his wife would have had to pay extra to acquire the pension for him that her male colleagues were given automatically for all those years.

"The majority of workers in the NHS are female. The service desperately needs to attract back the women it has trained and lost. The current pension arrangements for female staff in the NHS are anachronistic and an insult to women.

"If the service is truly to be a female-friendly employer it must assure women that, if they die before their partner, that partner will receive the same pension as would the survivor of a male colleague. That is half her pension entitlement for all the years she has worked, not just those since 1988."

Farrand has looked at the possibility of legal action to fight his case, but has been advised the cost would be prohibitive.

Successive cases in the European courts have eradicated many aspects of discrimination in pensions but Elizabeth Potter, a solicitor who has advised Farrand, believes there is little prospect of further movement to give female workers full backdated equality in relation to spouse's benefits. 'They've seen equalisation of benefits as being too costly so [they have] distinguished between benefits and [equal] access.'

She argues that if cost was the prime issue in the NHS's case, it need not have backdated to 1988.

It could have met its legal obligations by equalising benefits for service from 1990. "They've gone for a halfway house."

The Equal Opportunities Commission agrees that avenues of appeal are exhausted in the European courts but says the deal received by couples such as Gillian Hanson and Roger Farrand is still unfair.

It would be up to the government to plug the gap in female NHS workers' pensions.

The government, unsurprisingly, is not enthusiastic about the idea.

In a statement from the NHS, it said that the pension scheme operates on a mutual basis where some members will receive larger benefits than others even though they have not paid more in. It gives the example of single members paying the same as those who are married even though they may have no dependents to receive benefits.

"In common with other schemes, the NHS scheme provided widows' but not widowers' pension cover until April 1988, when the Social Security Act 1986 introduced various pension changes affecting all occupational health schemes.

"It was decided to introduce the change without extra charge from April 1988 but the improvement could not be offered retrospectively without a general increase in scheme contributions."

Not all pension schemes have adopted the same attitude.

Many local government pension schemes, which have a total of 2.5 million members, decided three years ago to reorganise their schemes to backdate equalised benefits to 1972. Previously women had to pay to buy fully backdated spouse's pensions.

The total cost of introducing the change was "not a great deal" says Terry Edwards, of the Local Government Pensions Committee, although, to help pay for it, new manual staff had to increase their contributions from 5% to 6% of salary. Among private pension schemes, the rules vary on benefits for widowers.

David Astley, technical manager at the National Association of Pension Funds, says: "It would by no means be unique for a widower to get less than a widow, given the same salary and length of service for their respective partners."

 Cash would like to hear from you if your pension pays less to widowers. Or perhaps you belong to a scheme with equalised benefits. Send an email to cash@observer.co.uk or write to Widowers' Pensions, c/o Personal Finance Editor, The Observer, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER.